Wilder Campaign Reviewed

'92 Staff Paid For 5 Months After Presidential Bid Ended

October 06, 1994|By BOB KEMPER Daily Press

WASHINGTON — When former Gov. Doug Wilder suddenly dropped out of the 1992 presidential race, five stunned campaign staffers were given severance pay - and then kept on the payroll for five more months.

Two other members of Wilder's gubernatorial staff who had been working part time for the campaign also took a severance pay of sorts by writing themselves checks totaling $15,000 in campaign funds.

Seven other staff members also got severance pay but did not remain on the payroll.

The payments to those 14 campaign staff members were at the heart of a special Federal Elections Commission hearing Wednesday on the finances of Wilder's ill-fated 1992 campaign.

At the hearing, which was called at the request of Wilder's campaign committee, the campaign's lawyer, Leslie J. Kerman, told the FEC that the payments were reasonable and appropriate and that Wilder should not be penalized for paying them.

These people "were not highly compensated political gurus," Kerman said. They are "regular working men and women who through no fault of their own saw their source of income unexpectedly ... terminated.

"The committee in making those payments thought it was doing the right thing," she said.

The FEC contends that Wilder's campaign racked up $42,000 in expenses not allowed by federal law and wants the campaign to return $12,000 of that - the amount of the public matching funds involved - to the U.S. Treasury. The campaign also was told to repay $19,000 in matching grant funds for which it had been ineligible.

In addition, the FEC insists that Wilder owes Virginia $30,000 for the state plane he used during the campaign and another $3,000 for using state phones to make campaign-related calls.

Wilder's campaign is disputing all the charges.

However, Wilder did agree to repay $2,800 for using the state plane for two flights in 1991 that were part of a vacation. Originally, Wilder charged the flight to taxpayers. After the incident was publicized, he agreed to pay the expenses and used campaign funds to do it.

The FEC then ruled that he could not use the funds for that purpose. Wilder now will pay for the plane out of his own money, Kerman said.

The debate over Wilder's use of the state aircraft will be addressed by the FEC later, but Kerman spent two hours Wednesday trying to convince commission members that the bulk of the campaign expenses that the FEC considers inappropriate were, in fact, legitimate.

Wilder quit the race on Jan. 8, 1992, before any Democratic caucuses or primaries were held. Three weeks later, his staffers received severance pay. But five of those staff members had to be kept on the payroll until the following June so they could help close the campaign office, Kerman said.

Two other staff members, assistant campaign treasurer Ruth Jones and her assistant, William Keough, worked on the campaign parttime while holding onto their state jobs. Jones was paid by the campaign; Keough was not. When the campaign collapsed, Jones wrote a $10,000 check to herself and a $5,000 check to Keough, according to Kerman.